


The Ghost of a Plan

by charmandhex



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, Canon-typical language, Gen, I wrote Lucas Miller again because I love Noelle, Implied/Referenced Character Death, What happened when Lucas pulled Noelle out of the Astral Plane that's it that's the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 18:15:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20101519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charmandhex/pseuds/charmandhex
Summary: When his mom died, Lucas’s plan consisted of the following: get his mom back from the Astral Plane and put her into a new body. Unsurprisingly, this plan left a lot to be desired, and his methodology led to some unintended results.





	The Ghost of a Plan

**Author's Note:**

> I do not consent to having my work hosted on any unofficial apps, particularly those with ad revenue or subscription services.

It’s ready. The Siphon is ready. Or, Lucas thinks, amending to himself as he looks down at the intricate circuitry of the disk, it’s as ready as he knows it can be.

Because the only way to truly know if it’s ready? Is to test it.

Lucas isn’t sure when he last slept. He’s not sure when he last ate. He’s not even sure when he last drank from the half full bottle of now room temperature water. As he straightens up from his bent over position at his bench, his back protests the change from the long held position. Lucas Miller is in no shape to run a scientific experiment.

But it’s for his mom. He has to.

Lucas carefully stands, shaking the numbness from his legs. He takes a step and staggers. This is fine. This is absolutely fine. Lucas can do this. He turns and walks resolutely to the blue sapphire disk that he’d ruthlessly ripped from its place in orbit in the Cosmoscope. It’s only fitting after all. Maureen’s life’s work had taken her from him, so he’d taken a critical piece from it as well.

As always, it shows the Astral Plane, with its endless sea of glowing souls and that looming tower in the distance. As always, Lucas is glad that the disk doesn’t ever seem to get closer to the tower and that no one on the other side seems to notice the window into this plane. Especially now.

Hands shaking (anticipation, not nervousness, and definitely not exhaustion, Lucas tells himself), Lucas begins the initiation sequence he’d built into the Siphon. It begins to glow, as expected. So far so good.

The glow spreads, the current of magic following the circuitry like water in a stream to the center of the device. And there it accumulates, swirling into a whirlpool of concentrated energy. The sharp, almost necrotic smell hits Lucas’s nostrils, and the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck rise up.

A beam of magic projects outward and hits the sapphire. Lucas stares, unblinking. The magic passes through the sapphire and reaches outward into the unknown, into the other plane. It arcs down, down, down until it strikes the Sea of Souls.

Lucas waits. The beam begins to draw back, and the light of the soul he’d picked from their eternal resting place rises with it. Back and out, away from the dead and to the world of the living. Lucas exhales, hard and sharp.

The nameless soul reaches the plane of the sapphire mirror. Lucas’s breath catches as he’s watching, waiting. Arcane energy crackles in this plane and the next as the two are bridged and the soul passes through.

Soft, pale light washes over Lucas’s face as the soul returns to the Prime Material Plane. It has a warmth like sunlight. Lucas takes several careful steps back toward his desk, eyes on the soul the whole while. It approaches him even as he moves, closing the distance. When he reaches the desk, Lucas sets the Siphon down. And he picks up the Conduit.

The second part of the test. Lucas has managed to pull a soul free from the Raven Queen’s domain, but souls need a body, some kind of tether to this plane, lest the universe’s natural inclination to follow the flow of energy reclaim the soul. But Lucas has no true way of replicating a body, no cloning device nor typical necromantic practices.

No. What Lucas has, is an inventive mind and an aptitude for robotics. And so he carefully raises the Conduit, offering it up to the drowsy soul. The soul, for their part, reaches out toward the Conduit, to the glass fuse in its center. With a movement almost like a cat sleepily stretching, awoken from a nap sprawled in the afternoon sun, the soul floats into the Conduit.

And there they remain. Lucas holds the functional, _functional_ Conduit occupied by an actual soul and looks to the functional, _functional_ Siphon that brought them here. He sags against the desk, a flood of relief and exhaustion breaking through the dam of adrenaline and caffeine and grief he had built up to keep himself working. Lucas yawns.

“H-hello?” A soft voice calls out to him. Lucas jerks his head, staring down at the Conduit. “W-where am I? What’s going on?”

Oh _shit_.

Lucas pulled a soul free from the Astral Plane and has kept it here. But he’d never thought this far ahead.

“H-hello,” Lucas answers. No. He has to be calm. Calm. That’s an actual real soul that he-

Lucas _really_ didn’t think ahead to this point. What would Mom do? What would Mom say? What _did_ Mom say, to a young Lucas needing comfort? Somehow, Lucas doubts that any of Maureen’s usual sayings, more practical than comforting, will be of much help in this case. “You’re in… you’re in my lab. I… you’re in a device I made. My name is Lucas. What’s… what’s your name?”

“I… N- my name is Noelle. I… I don’t understand.”

“It’s okay, Noelle. You can rest now. It’s okay.”

“Rest… that sounds good.” And by nature of habit ingrained so deeply that it remains though whatever corporeal form Noelle had is gone, Noelle yawns. Lucas waits a few moments, but the light spilling out from the Conduit dims, as Noelle’s consciousness dips as her soul would below the surface of the Sea of Souls.

Carefully, as though he might wake her, though Lucas is not sure that he would be able to do so, Lucas sets the Conduit holding Noelle on the bench.

“Well. Shit.” Lucas says plainly, into the empty –or perhaps not so empty– space of the lab.

Noelle needs a body. Not like, just the Conduit. Noelle needs a real, like, actual, functional body really quickly. And then…

Well, Lucas honestly isn’t sure what happens next. The experiment was successful to be sure. But he’d only ever thought to the point of pulling his mom free from the Astral Plane and getting her back. He hadn’t, hadn’t really banked on having a whole other consciousness to contend with.

So what’s next? Well. Maureen will need a body. And Noelle _needs_ a body. Lucas glances down to the sleeping soul. Lucas can do that. Lucas has built a bunch of robots. He can surely build one quickly, have Noelle ready to go before she even wakes up. Then maybe… maybe she won’t be mad. Would he be mad if someone had just unexpectedly extracted him from the Astral Plane? Will she even remember the Astral Plane? Will she remember her previous life? Gods, what will Lucas tell her? Should he tell the truth? Should he lie? What lie could he even tell?

Lucas shakes off his stupor, the astonishment and the relief still coiling through him. He has work to do. His stomach growls.

Okay. Okay, okay, okay. Water and food for Lucas, body for Noelle. All important. Lucas drains the remaining water in his bottle in one go. He’s gotten rather used to lukewarm water anyway; it’s so easy to get distracted when you’re invested in your experiments. Lucas sends up a message to John Cook for food. Luckily, it’s the middle of the day, though Lucas would have had no way of knowing that on his own. There’s no windows to the outside in the lab, and he’s long since lost track of when he came in.

And just as John Cook is assuredly working on food for Lucas up above, Lucas starts working on a body for Noelle in his lab. The process is haphazard, frantic, colored by the sudden realization of there being an actual soul present, and while Lucas had had the Siphon and the Conduit ready to go… he’s entirely unprepared. Which means it’s time to improvise. Lucas tries several of his past robots. None of them can be altered to house the Conduit. Lucas throws his hands in the air. He doesn’t have time to build an entirely new robot. Lucas searches through his various robot parts for anything that could house the Conduit, and he pulls out an old, roughly car engine shaped body capable of synthesizing and dosing healing potions. He finds two arms, entirely mismatched, but functional, definitely functional. Lucas goes to work, wiring and welding and carefully retrofitting the scrumbled together robot body to house the glass fuse that is the Conduit.

And then Lucas collapses into his chair, sandwich in hand, again watching, again waiting. He’ll find out soon enough. Then it’s on to Maureen.

He’s awoken with a stiff neck when Noelle stirs, growing brighter, more awake. “Hello?” She calls again. “Lucas?”

“Hi, Noelle. I’m here.” Lucas pushes down the yawn. How long did he sleep? Probably not enough.

“W-where- how- you- you said you made me?” Noelle sounds confused, and Lucas’s eyes widen immediately. That is. Not what he’d said.

“What- Noelle, what do you remember?” Lucas asks.

“Uh, well… I have to be honest, Lucas, not much. Just… just, I sorta, um, woke up, I guess, and you asked me what my name is and told me you made me and told me your name.” Oh. Noelle does not remember. At all. Shit. What does that mean for Maureen? Will Noelle remember in time? He has to keep her around, right, to see if she does? In the meantime, what does Lucas do with an amnesiac ghost robot? “Lucas? Am I… am I a robot?”

“Uh… technically?”

“Oh, so, uh, I’m a robot, and you made me, and I must be like… I must be brand new then, huh?”

Lucas doesn’t _want_ to lie. But the truth is complicated. And who knows how Noelle will react if he tells her? What if she freaks out? What if she gets hurt?

“Uh, y-yes, Noelle. That’s… that’s basically it. You are, uh, you have this nice new robot body, and you’re… _basically_ brand new to this plane.”

“Oh. Well, that settles it then.” Noelle pauses. “So, uh, did you build me to have a purpose or… or something?”

“Oh!” Lucas startles. “Uh… You can do some cool nurse things. And, uh… I could use a general sort of lab assistant?” It comes out sounding like a question.

“I can do that! I… well, now, I don’t know quite how I know, but I bet I’m real good at helping and such.”

“I bet you are too, Noelle. I bet that we’re going to do great things together.” Lucas says, and Noelle goes even brighter, like she’s smiling in there.

If Noelle remembers, that’s fine; Lucas can deal with that when it happens. But until then… until then, Lucas needs some practice building robot bodies that can house the fuse. Maureen’s new body needs to be perfect; it’s for his mom. Lucas also needs some more practice with the Siphon, and he needs to be able to _find_ Maureen’s soul out there in all… all that.

“Noelle. Time to go to work!” Lucas announces cheerfully, and he sweeps one arm carelessly across the surface of his workbench, sweeping most of it onto the floor. Plans. He needs plans. Plans for a robot body, for many robot bodies. Plans for finding Maureen Miller and extracting her from the Astral Plane. Lucas starts writing, and Noelle hovers, floating around, grabbing this and that as needed. Lucas can do this.

Two feet away from Lucas, the Philosopher’s Stone sits on the workbench, unused.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there!
> 
> So this fic was prompted by me shouting into the void, "GRIFFIN MCELROY WHY IS NOELLE A SCRUMBLED TOGETHER ROBOT?" It was 3 AM, and it very much got away from me.
> 
> Kudos and comment to feed your local lich, and subscribe or go to [charmandhex](https://charmandhex.tumblr.com/) for updates


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